Re: [Tracker] trackerd modifies the access time of files it indexes

["Ivan Frade" <ivan frade gmail com>]

Hi Jeff!

On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 5:44 PM, Jeff Epler <jepler unpythonic net> wrote:

As you probably know, Linux since 2.6.8 supports the O_NOATIME flag
specifically to allow indexing programs to avoid changing the access
time of the files it indexes.

In the 0.6.3 timeframe, the O_NOATIME flag was added in multiple places
to attempt to avoid changing the access time of files merely because
they were accessed:

None of the currently most active developers were in the project at that time. Probably we lost that flag during the refactor. Thanks for the point!

Are you interested in preventing access time modification for indexed
files?  If so, how can I help?  Should I file bugs on gnome bugzilla?
If so, against 0.6.6 or against trunk?

It seem that gio/glocalfileinfo.c:get_content_type() could be
modified to use O_NOATIME when it is available, either unconditionally
or through a new GFileQueryInfoFlags bit; or
G_FILE_ATTRIBUTE_STANDARD_FAST_CONTENT_TYPE could be used in the call to
g_file_query_info() in tracker-file-utils.c to avoid the open(); or in
some other way I haven't anticipated.

If there is a way to open a file without modifying the modification time in the GIO API, please open a bug in tracker (bugzilla.gnome.org). A patch would be also welcome :).

If such a flag/method doesn't exist, then it is a bug in GIO (and quite serious), so you should open the bug to gio (or glib).

Definetly is something we want to fix. Thanks for your help!

Ivan